


Kiss My Eyes

by Tokyo_the_Glaive



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 14:59:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2625989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tokyo_the_Glaive/pseuds/Tokyo_the_Glaive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(University AU)</p><p>Q's roommate brings back a girl, and Q finds himself alone in the hallway feeling rather sorry for himself - alone, that is, until James shows up and offers something more than a place to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss My Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt from shadowofagod: "University AU. Q's roommate just came in with a girl and James is the only other person on the hall.
> 
> Once again, with countless thanks to misflyer1102 for being the kindest editor you could ask for.

There was a tremendous weight on Q’s chest and he couldn’t get it off.  Something stringy and pasty was in his mouth, and he spat and choked as he woke up, flailing to try to free himself from whatever had landed so unceremoniously on top of him. 

He’d decided to stay in for the night rather than go out for some celebratory clubbing with his roommate, Greg.  The term was nearly over, and while Greg had already taken his finals, Q’s began the very next day.  He wanted to get some sleep, even if he privately thought he could do quantum chemistry with his eyes shut.  There was no sense in getting cocky so close to the end.

“Oh, Graham,” some woman’s voice came from directly above him.  Q realized, belatedly, that whatever was on top of him was _moving_.  He froze in abject horror as his body woke with a jolt.

“Greg,” Q heard his roommate say, the last ‘g’ slurring and dragging.  “It’s Greg, love.”  So Greg was at least a little drunk, and he’d brought a girl back.  Her body was gyrating on top of Q, and he wanted to shrink into nothing.  How had Greg managed to mistake Q’s bed for his own?  Q felt Greg’s hands groping around the sheets.  In the dark, he couldn’t see his roommate’s trajectory in order to move in time, and Greg managed to grab Q’s hand instead of the girl’s, forcing their fingers to interlace.  Greg held it for a moment, but he must have figured out that something was wrong when the girl ran both her hands down his back; (Q could tell that she did so because he could feel her shoulder blades, though pulled forward, digging into his chest.  Her bones felt like she’d sharpened them for the purpose of stabbing someone).

“Shit,” Greg said.  Some of the weight lifted from Q’s chest, and he coughed.  He hadn’t realized just how constricted his lungs had been.  Greg flipped on one of their floor lamps, and Q’s eyes adjusted quickly to the light.  The girl was still sprawled on top of him, and it was her hair that was in his mouth.  Q gave her a cursory shove, and she shrieked and spun around.  As soon as she saw him, she started giggling.

“Oh, Graham—“

“ _Greg_ , love, it’s Greg—“

“—you didn’t tell me we were going to have _company_!”  She pulled Q up by his nightshirt.  “Wanna play?” she drawled.

“No,” Q said.  “Please let go.”

“Oh, come on,” she said.  “It’ll be fun.”  She leaned in close and whispered something so filthy Q’s mind derailed on the spot.  He jumped out of the bed, grasping blindly for his glasses.

“Sorry, mate,” Greg was saying.  Q didn’t think he looked particularly sorry.  “Thought that was my side of the room, yeah.”

“No worries, just, ah, get me when you’re done?” Q offered quickly, heading for the door.  He really didn’t need to see any of this.  Q grabbed his laptop and charger and a robe.

“Oh, come on, stay!” the girl ordered, pulling at Q’s shirt again.

Greg said something, and she parroted him, and even before Q got to the door, they were all over each other (in bed, _his bed_ , damn it) and had all but forgotten about him.

Q fled to the sanctity of the hallway and slammed the door, clutching his laptop to his chest.  He looked around, not knowing what to do with himself.  He could always head to the library, but he didn’t have shoes, and it was cold outside.  No one else seemed to be awake, but not-quite-dead hand-rolled blunts littered the floor of the common room and the air stank of hash, so that was out, too.

Q sank down against the wall and leaned his head against the panelling.  He’d all but begged his dean to put in a good word for him for a single room, but his pleas had gone unanswered.  Not for the first time, he cursed his dean and his advisor and everyone else who might have touched his housing application.  He didn’t need to deal with this now, or ever, really.  He had been sleeping, and happy, and warm.  Now he was unfortunately awake, and not happy, and very much not warm.  Everything seemed rather terrible.

Though he’d grabbed his laptop, he didn’t feel like working.  There was nothing much to do, anyway, as all of his term projects were done well in advance of their deadlines.  He could take another look at the security overrides he was working on…but those required some degree of mental faculty, which he did not, at the moment, possess.  Instead, Q curled around his still-warm laptop and tucked his head in.  There was no real harm in shutting his eyes for a few minutes while he waited for Greg and whatever her name was to finish up.  As sleep came over him, Q thought that objectively, this wasn’t so bad.  A yawn, and Q was gone.

All too soon, there was someone shaking his shoulder, and once again, everything was terrible.

“Hey,” Q heard.

“What’s that?” Q asked.  He blinked and fiddled with his glasses.  One good rub of his eyes and the person before him came into focus.

“Oh, hello,” Q said.  The person in front of him stood up.  Q recognized him from the day they’d all moved in at the beginning of the term; his name was John, or James, or something like that.  Whoever he was, Q didn’t associate with him.

Still.  Q swallowed.  John/James was _very_ attractive. 

Maybe this wasn’t so terrible after all.

“You locked out?” John/James asked.

“What?” Q asked.  John/James looked at him as if he were dull.  “Oh.  No.  Er, maybe.  My roommate brought back a girl.”

“Ah,” John/James said, nodding in understanding.  “And they kicked you out?  How rude.”

Q rolled his eyes and forced himself to stand up.  “They less kicked me out and more decided that my bed was their best option.  Never mind that I was in it.”

John/James grinned.  “That’s one way to do things.  How was she?”

Q frowned.  “Not my area,” he said.  

John/James’s smile didn’t diminish in the slightest.  After a beat, he moved down the hall.  “Well, I’ve got a single.  You might as well come in.”

“Seriously?”

“Unless, of course, you think that they’ll be coherent enough at the end of things to remember to let you back in.”  Q rather doubted it, so he followed when John/James directed him to the door at the end of the hallway.

“Nice,” he said, looking around the room.  John/James stepped past him.  “How’d you manage it?”

“What, a single?” John/James asked.  His grin widened.  “Oh, I had a nice chat with the housing committee.  I was persuasive.”  He winked as he sank into his desk chair, and Q’s stomach flipped.  John/James knew how to _move_.

“Damn you,” he said.  “I bent over backwards to get a single, and they didn’t even consider the application.”

“Ah, but did you try bending _them_ over?”  Q nearly choked on his own spit.  “Works like a charm.”

“You—”  Q stuttered while trying to find an adequate descriptor.  “You bastard.”

John/James looked rather proud of himself.  “Effective, though,” he said.  Q had to give him that.  “Sit down, make yourself at home.  I take it you were asleep when you received a rather sultry awakening?”  Q made to sit on the floor, but John/James shook his head.  “I said to make yourself at home, not to act like an uninvited guest.  There’s a bed, and I’m not sleeping in it.”

“You sure?” Q asked, cheeks burning.  John/James said nothing, so Q climbed on top of the covers.  Hell, even the mattress was more comfortable than Q’s.  It was all patently unfair.

“So,” John/James said.  Q remembered he had asked a question.

“Oh, yes.  I was asleep, though I wouldn’t call it a ‘sultry awakening’, or even a sultry anything.  No one tipsy enough not to recognize their own bed has any business partaking in such activities.”

“Pleasures of the flesh?” John/James offered.  “Oh, don’t be a prude.  They’re just enjoying themselves.  You should try it sometime.”

“I am not a prude, and I resent the implication,” Q sniffed.  “I’ve got no problem with it.  It’s just, they’re in _my bed_.”

John/James’s eyebrows went straight up.  “They didn’t move after they found you in it?” he asked.  Q shook his head to confirm.  “That is unfortunate.”

“Quite,” Q replied.  A moment of silence passed.  “I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.  Don’t feel like you have to socialize on my account.  I do appreciate your letting me in, though.  It was rather cold in the hall.”

“Anytime,” John/James said.  Q’s stomach did that flip again, and he bit his lip.  “I wasn’t busy.  If you’d rather do work, though,” James said, trailing off.  The way he spun the word “work” made it sound like the most distasteful thing the universe had ever managed to conjure.

“Oh, ah, no,” Q said, setting his beloved laptop aside.

John/James smiled.  “You know,” he said, and damn it, he had a way of making innocuous words sound filthy in a way that the sordid language of the girl Greg had brought back couldn’t come close to matching. “I don’t believe we’ve ever been introduced.”

“No,” Q said.  The heat had refused to leave his face ever since coming to John/James’s room, but this felt hot enough to be obvious.  “I don’t think so.”

“I’m Bond,” John/James said.  “James Bond.”

Q was nervous enough to laugh.  “Are you serious?” he asked.   _Bond, James Bond_ arched an eyebrow.  “It’s an odd introduction, is all.  I mean, what I mean is—“

“I like to be memorable,” James said smoothly.  Q felt a shiver run up his spine.  Oh, he was memorable all right.  “I don’t believe I’ve ever caught your name, though.”

“Q,” Q answered immediately, eagerly.  “I’m Q.”

“Q?” James asked, stifling a laugh.  Q felt his face flush for an entirely different reason.  The urge to melt came back in full force.  “And you accuse me of odd introductions.”

“It’s what people call me,” Q said defensively.  “I doubt they call you ‘Bond, James Bond’.”

“No,” James said, “but it is my name.  I assume Q is short for something.”

Q looked to the side.  “That’s right,” he said.

James leaned forward.  Q loved and hated the way his eyes sparkled with interest.  “So, something embarassing, then.” 

“You have no idea.”

“Try me.”

Q instinctively leaned away.  “No, thanks.”

James gave up all too easily for Q’s tastes.  Q had a vision of James pressing the subject and in the process leaning forward even more.  James’s shirt didn’t leave much underneath to the imagination, and Q had caught sight of the play of rather well-toned muscles when he last moved—not what Q usually went for, but on James they looked _delicious_.

“Fine,” James said.  “Surely you have a last name, at least.”

Q nearly answered, then said, “If I tell you that, you’ll just look me up in the directory.”  James’s grin was entirely unapologetic.  “You arse!  You tried to trick me!”

“If it makes you feel any better, even if you don’t tell me, I’ll find out anyway,” James said, smug.

Q frowned.  “And how will you do that?”

“Easy enough.  All student accounts have photos attached.”

Q schooled his expression to be as flat as possible.  “Do you have any idea how many students you’ll have to sift through before you get to me?”

“Several hundred, I’m sure.”  It was Q’s turn to stare at him as if he were dumb.  “Or less.  I suppose you wouldn’t be willing to tell me if your surname comes rather closer to the end of the alphabet, would you?  Would save me some work.”

Q groaned.  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Why?  I don’t have anything to call you otherwise.”

“Call me Q.”

“Fine, have it your way, _Q_.”  Q couldn’t tell if James meant to be derisory, but his voice went a full octave lower than his usual tone, and it was doing things that Q really didn’t need to think about.  James slid lower in his chair, and Q realized that, oh no, James knew _exactly_ what he was doing.  “But, I do have one rule, so tell me something about yourself.”

Q cocked his head to one side.  “How do you mean?”

Not two seconds did the words leave his mouth but he became aware that James’s eyes had shifted down from his eyes.  A moment after, Q determined that James’s attention was now fixed on his bared neck.

“I like to know something about the people who find their way into my bed,” James murmured, eyes not leaving Q’s neck.

Q’s mouth opened and closed ineffectually.  He swallowed, but any saliva left in his mouth was dry with anticipation and, yes, want.  “Well,” he said finally, the ‘l’s tripping his tongue, “I suppose that’s only fair.”

Q’s eyes naturally followed as James ever so slowly stood and began to move across the room.

“Of course,” James said softly, calmly  sauntering toward Q with assured grace.  “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want.”

Q didn’t miss the emphasis, nor the way James carefully moved so as never to block the door.  For his part, Q had no intention of moving.  “And what wouldn’t I want?” Q asked.

“That depends,” James said.  He came close enough that Q had to tilt his head back just to see his face.  James’s tongue crossed his bottom lip, wetting it thoroughly as he leaned over Q.   Q had never envied a pair of lips before.  “Depends on what you _do_ want.” 

Someone knocked.

Q and James stared at each other for a long moment, long enough that whoever it was knocked again.

“Someone has terrible timing,” James said, moving to the door.  He sighed dramatically, and Q put his hand over his mouth to suppress the laughter that threatened to bubble over.  James shot a look over his shoulder that was likely meant to appear serious but was ultimately ruined by the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

The door swung open to reveal a raggedy Greg.  His cheek was swollen, likely because of what looked suspiciously like a rather deep set of human dental impressions, and his right earlobe appeared to be bleeding.

“Rough night?” James asked as Greg’s eyes scanned the inside of the room, alighting finally on Q.

“You have no idea,” Greg said.  “Q, I’m so sorry.”

Q couldn’t stop grinning.  “Have a good time?”

Greg’s scowl spoke volumes.  “Biter,” he said.  “I don’t like biters.  I’m glad I found you.  Thought for a while that you’d left.  She’s gone, and I, uh, stripped your sheets and put them in the laundry.”

“Thanks,” Q said, then frowned.

He and Greg must have been thinking along the same lines because Greg continued, “You can have my bed for the night, I know you have finals tomorrow.  You have no idea how sorry I am.  Truly.”  He rubbed the back of his head and stared at the ground.

James had been watching Q throughout this interaction, and though Q had been careful to keep his expression neutral—Q was fairly sure Greg had never washed his sheets in his life and was frankly surprised that he had professed knowledge of the washing machine’s location, much less of its use—James must have picked up on something on his face.  He said, “It’s not a problem.  Q can stay here.”

“What?” Greg asked.  His head came up so fast that Q felt whiplashed just looking at him.  Greg’s eyes flitted between James and Q.  “I didn’t know you knew each other.”

Q said, “We didn’t,” at the same time James said, “We do.”  They looked at each other. James laughed, and Q was quick to follow.  James had a nice laugh, deep and round.  Q liked it.  He liked a lot of things about James.

Still, Greg stood in the door.  Q took pity on him and said, “Don’t worry about it.  Just leave our room unlocked, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Greg said, stepping back.  As he moved further into the light of the hallway, Q got a better look at his face, in particular taking note of just how red he’d become.  “Will do.”

Greg all but fled back to the other end of the hall.

Q said, “That went well.”

James snorted and shut the door again.  “That’s one way of putting it.”  His face went serious.  “I hope I didn’t put you in an awkward situation.”

“How do you mean?”

“He thinks we’re sleeping together.”

Q froze, then nodded.  “Yes, I suppose he would.”  He bit his lips, then said, “Though, I suppose, no matter what, that’s what we’re going to be doing, anyway.”  He caught a look at James’s face as he moved his laptop from the bed to the floor.  There was a cross of shock and amusement there, and perhaps something else, too.  “What?  Either we’re going to have sex or we’re not, either way we’re going to be sleeping in the same location.”

“That’s rather forward of you.  I wasn’t suspecting it.”

Q pulled a face.  “Why, you think I’m some kind of blushing virgin?”

“No.”  James winced.  “Not exactly,” he amended.  “Not the blushing part, anyway.”

Q hurled a pillow at James, who caught it deftly and tossed it back.  Q, whose hand-eye coordination extended only to the realm of scientific computing, toppled over with the momentum.

Q sat back up to the sound of James’s laughter.  “Not funny,” he muttered.  James bit his knuckles to keep from making any further sounds, but his facial expression didn’t shift.  “You’re terrible,” Q said.

“I try,” James replied.  “For instance, I try with you.”

Q’s eyebrows went up, and he set his jaw.  “Use that line on the ladies on the housing committee, too?”

“And gents,” James added, though he shook his head to indicate the opposite.  “But no, not for any of them.”

“Really.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“I met you ten minutes ago.  You’ve obviously had multiple sexual partners, and you have,” Q said begrudgingly, “correctly deduced that I’ve had none.  If course I don’t believe you.”

James folded his arms.  He was quiet, but Q watched and waited.  “I’ll have to try harder, then,” James said, “to prove it.”  He came closer, and Q felt his pulse ratchet up another twenty or so beats per minute.  “I’ll start,” James said, “by putting you to bed.”

Q snorted.  “Was that supposed to be sexy?”  A hand pushing his shoulder down cut off what came next.  He exhaled loudly.  When he felt James pulling at the covers around him, he cracked an eye and said, “You can’t be serious.”

The smile in James’s eyes was the only answer Q really needed, but James said, “Of course.  Gavin said you have finals tomorrow.”

“Greg,” Q said.  As James poked and prodded Q’s limbs until they made their way underneath the blankets, Q felt a yawn rising in his chest and fought to keep it inside.  “His name is Greg.  And I can take my finals in my sleep.”

“Really, now?  Have you invented something to keep your hands moving when your brain is nonfunctional?”

The yawn finally escaped.  “Work in progress,” Q said around it.

James chuckled.  “And I’m sure it’ll be a success.  For now, you need to sleep.”

“What about you?” Q asked.  Were he more awake, he would have cursed how childish he sounded.  Sleep did that to him, made him less aware and more ridiculous.

In lieu of answer, James said, “Go to sleep.  I’ll get you up in the morning.”

Q’s eyes drifted shut.  The bed was obscenely comfortable, and within minutes, Q was snoring lightly.

* * *

As soon as he heard the shift in breathing, James moved quickly.  He turned off all of the lights and set himself up on his laptop at his desk.  He angled his body toward Q such that the glow of the screen wouldn’t bother him.  Then he set to work.

James’s most recent project popped open when the laptop woke up.  His eyes ran over each of the photographs in turn.  There was Q walking with a group of students to the canteen for lunch.  Another had a close-up of Q’s face as he tutored a freshman in advanced introductory physics.  Image after image, all of them of Q, flashed before James’s attentive eyes.  They were imprinted on James’s retinas, had been for quite some time.  Last, of course, was Q’s file: standard mugshot, name, date of birth, approximate height and weight.  James had all of the basics and then some.  If he were to send it in now, he was sure he’d have top marks.

He took it all and compressed it into one administrator-accessible-only file.  A message popped up at the corner of the screen warning him that, once he did so, the files would no longer be accessible by anyone else.  James’s eyes shifted to the bed as Q rolled over, then back down to the screen.  Yes, he was sure.

With that, he set his laptop aside and stepped out into the hall, careful not to lock himself out.

“Well?”  James looked up to see Scarlett.  He put a finger to his lips and motioned for them to move down the hall.  She gave a knowing smirk but followed his directions.  She leaned against the door to Q’s shared room when they stopped.  “Greg’s out, and there’s no one else here.”

“Isn’t he in the laundry?”

Scarlett huffed. “Arsehole didn’t know how, the wanker.  I’m dealing with it now.  I think he headed back to whatever dull little club he’d been at.”  James pulled a face.  “Don’t give me that look.  Tell me you made it count because that was disgusting and I never want to do it again: I don’t care how many favors you owe me.”

“That’s the thing,” James said.

Scarlett raised one eyebrow.  “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”

“I’m not doing it.”

She hit her head against the door.  “Let me get this straight,” she said.  “I hooked up with this guy’s roommate for the express purpose of getting him to you, held up said roommate up for plenty long enough for you to get what you needed, and you’re not doing it?”  She clenched and unclenched her right hand.  “Am I getting this?  Are you crazy?”

“I didn’t ask you to sleep with him, I asked you to distract him,” James argued.  The heated look Scarlett sent his way was enough to push him to a different tactic.  “To answer your question, yes, you are getting this, and no, I’m not crazy.”  Scarlett hit her head again.  “And I need another favor.”

Scarlett was in James’s personal space in less time than it takes to say ‘fast’.  “Not a chance,” she said.  “You want to pass, don’t you?  This is your shot,” she said, pointing down the hall.  “You finish up and submit the assignment, just like everyone else.”

“Except, this isn’t like anything else,” James said.

Scarlett slowly moved back to lean against the door.  She sighed deeply and frowned.  “Oh, dear” she said.  “You got attached.”  The denial was on James’s lips, but Scarlett pushed on.  “Christ, James.  You follow them around for a while, you get to know everything about them, you find out something verifiable that isn’t in the file, and you report back to the professor.  It’s easy.  No emotions involved, remember?”

James sighed.  “I know.”

Scarlett’s shoulders dropped.  “If it makes you feel any better, I almost didn’t submit mine,” she said.  “I think Alec had second thoughts, too.”

“But you did.”

“We both did.  Alec says thanks, by the way.  I guess you helped him out.”

“Just a little.”  James looked at the ceiling.  He didn’t want to think about how he’d helped Alec.  He never thought that he’d have to be that type of person, even if it had just been an act.  James liked to protect, not terrify, at least not without good cause.

Still, it was over.  He said, “I took my files off of the server.”

Scarlett was very quiet for a long time.  “You like him,” she said finally.

“I like him,” James confirmed.

He did not say what was running through his mind.  There was some degree of panic, if only because he did want to pass, but mostly his thoughts centered around Q.  He knew Q was nothing if not a genius: he meant it when he said that Q could probably build something that would enable him to take exams whilst sleeping.  Q knew physics, chemistry, and computer science like the back of his hand. They seemed to come to him as easily as breathing.  Where James was physically durable and seductive, Q was ingenious and somewhat of a recluse.

At the very least, he was reclusive enough that getting a room near enough to watch him at nearly every hour proved to be more difficult than James had anticipated.  He’d gone through each member of the housing committee with the same smile and empty words to ensure that Q got a double and a roommate (so he couldn’t shut himself up in there indefinitely) and that James got a single (so that no one else would notice James’s comings and goings), and it had left him feeling hollow.  He had picked Q as a target because he was attractive, but he’d stuck with him because he was intelligent, and the combination made him more interesting than anyone else on campus.

The interesting ones, James’s professor had warned, were always the dangerous ones.

James had followed Q for months, carefully avoiding any and all contact.  In fact, James could recall only one brief conversation with Q at the beginning of the term.  It had been inevitable, when they were moving in, that they would bump into each other.  James had pulled out all of the stops to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, and it appeared to have worked.

It had hurt, a little bit.  Maybe his attachment had begun even then.

“I need a favor,” James repeated.  The beginnings of an idea took shape in his mind.

“What do you need?” Scarlett asked.  There was none of her characteristic sweetness in her tone.  James looked at her, all sunken eyes and swollen lips and jutting bones.  He scrapped his new plan as quickly as he’d come around to it.

“Never mind,” he said.  James moved back toward his room.  “I’m going to do this right,” he said.

“You do that, you don’t pass,” Scarlett said.  “That’s what this is all about, that’s endgame, proving that you can.”

James pursed his lips.  “I know,” he said.  “I’ll be fine.  I think you’ll do just fine, too.  You do leave such a lovely first impression.”

Scarlett bared her teeth in return.  “Very funny,” she said.  “Good luck.”

James nodded and retreated back to the darkness of his room.  Q’s snores were just as light as before, but his breathing had evened even further.  He was deep in sleep, completely unaware of what had transpired outside.

“I’m going to do this right,” James told him.  He pulled a spare blanket out of the closet to use as a pad between himself and the floor.  “I want to do this right.”

James knew, in reality, that very little would make this right.  He’d stalked Q for months.  He knew more about him than he had any right to.  James put his hands behind his head and stared through the darkness to the ceiling.  Maybe he could get Q to tell him.  Maybe he’d receive permission to know the things that he knew, and that would make it better.

James set an early morning alarm so that Q wouldn’t miss his finals.  James would have to face his professor tomorrow, too.  He would need an excuse, a few more empty words, and maybe the support of Scarlett and Alec.  By hook or crook, he’d pass.

They all would.  Scarlett and Alec, and Q, too, of course—there was never any doubt about that.  James imagined asking Q out for some celebratory drinks.  Not at a club, but someplace where they could have a space to themselves.  He’d start slow with Q and go the traditional route.  All of James’s research indicated that Q was less interested in the quick and dirty and more into the slow, sensual type of relationship.  James could do that.  Rather indulgently, James imagined what would come after that slow build, something that would likely take weeks if not months to make: Q, just as flushed as he was this evening, just as pleasant and pliable and eager, and _all his_.

Oh, yes, James thought, settling in to rest.  He would do it right.


End file.
